Well, I ended up with like half a dozen new blog posts that will not become their own posts by this point. I sometimes see people go to conferences and make individual posts for every session, and kudos to them, that’s just impossible for me it seems despite my best intentions.
We Underestimate the Testing Effect
– sponsored keynote session, televic education – (I know I’ve lamented before about showing up to what should be an interesting conference session only to be underwhelmed by a sales pitch, but at least we had a bit of warning today).
The presentation focused mostly on using software to deliver formative pre, post, and distributed formative and summative assessments. The focus seemed to be in industry from what I recall with some applications in training translators as well. The presenter strayed from testing by the end to discuss a new peer review product they were working on, but I’m still stuck on some things from the testing aspect of the presentation.
“Testing effect”: Testing or evaluation itself has a major and very positive effect on learning or memorizing information (emphasis mine).
I’ve blogged a bit about how I use this effect in some of my own personal learning as well as creating courseware. It’s not the only tool available, and there was of course a little pushback on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/lisamblaschke/status/1140529260295270401?s=21
This this tweet relates to the kitchen metaphor the presenter used (although he talked about a marketing kitchen) Assessment is about options, and choosing the right ingredients at the right time.
Now, to preface all of this the speaker lead in with Ebbinghaus. He introduced with the Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus 1850-1909.) The forgetting curve is something we hear a lot about (or at least frequently) in learning and ed tech, at least I heard it fairly regularly, but seeing those dates on Ebbinghaus today were a bit of a surprise. I’d forgotten how old some of this research is. I’m sure there is newer better research but that’s not what got pointed to. The history and evolution of this forgetting curve narrative would be an interesting piece for a full article post, not just the quick reflections category.
Connected Pedagogy: Learning and Teaching in the Digital Age
Steve Wheeler (who mysteriously tweeted audience view pictures and quotes of himself during the presentation) opened with describing the Open University UK, “university of the second chance”. Steve shared story about leaving university because he was terrified of evaluations. Then went to OU.
Through a few stories he talked about how, in his view, technology would change the work of teachers rather than replace them (the latter being an apparent wish of some technologists). He speculated on how teaching might change in time.
For example, Waverly is an in ear translator. Will it make language teachers obsolete? He doesn’t think so. It’s only one piece of the puzzle. However, it undermines current pedagogy which will need to change over time.
He briefly passes over the term connectivism (I think it got mentioned twice, which is surprising given the title of the talk. I guess I’ve been in enough Canadian based talks on this topic that it actually was jarring to see a distinct lack of names like Downes, Siemens, Cormier, Couros, etc.) Then he talked a bit about the role of content in this sort of new model:
The issue I took is that the positioning of connected learning as a ‘just for me’ activity really seemed individualistic and against some of the collegially and personal connections that can enable connected pedagogies, but I digress. He moved onto describe three activities prior to issuing a few “challenges”:
(I’ll put the first one here if I find it again)
#blimage – send someone an image and challenge them to write a post about learning based on that image. Then send onto others. (Terry Greene, I’m looking at your mr. 9x9x25 challenge).
#twistedpair ? (I think I missed this one too)
brings up “ungoogleable questions”. Story with the anatomy experts, ends with “learning is in the struggle”.
Finally, the Three Challenges we were promised at the beginning of the presentation: (more like questions than direct challenges)
- What can we teach our students that will never go out of date, and that will create constant wonder in the minds of our students?
- How will we capitalize on, rather than negate, the potential of students’ personal devices?
- How can we leverages existing connectedness to create new and dynamic learning environments, so students can learning be to become digital citizens?
What are your thoughts on these four?